Demystifying Agile in

Software Development
When is Agile right for your organization, and how to adopt it successfully?

wirtek.com © wirtek 2021

 Table of content

01 What are the ingredients of an Agile way of working? 05

The need for Agile 06

Key ingredients of an Agile way of developing software 07

02 Adopting Agile 12

What is the proper context to adopt Agile? 13

How to win buy-in when adopting Agile 15
How to know if your Agile implementation is a success 18

03 Challenges with adopting Agile 23

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Special thanks
In preparing this eBook, we’ve interviewed several Agile practitioners and consultants
to understand their perspectives and real-life insights. We are grateful to have had the
opportunity to pick their brains, and we would like to thank them for contributing and
sharing their thoughts:

Alexandra Filip Adina Balea

Scrum Master, Wirtek Director of Software Engineering
Services, Wirtek
Alexandra is Scrum Master at Wirtek. She’s
an Agile passionate with a background in Adina is currently leading the Software
software testing. Currently contributing to Engineering Services arm of Wirtek, an
the growth of both a Scrum and a Kanban established Danish IT services provider. A
team for one of Wirtek’s clients. believer in lifelong learning and challenging
the status quo, Adina is one of the early
adopters of Agile in Romania.

Flaviu Zapca
Co-founder, CoreBuild

Flaviu is co-founder of CoreBuild, a consulting

Ionuț Pop
Scrum Master, Wirtek
and software development company
specialized in .Net and mobile applications. Ionuț is Scrum Master and has been working
With over 16 years in the software industry, his at Wirtek since 2012. He is the father of two,
expertise spans Agile software development, husband of one, Babeș-Bolyai Computer
team and business management. In his spare Science degree, involved in the IT industry
time, he enjoys mountain climbing. since 2005.

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Mircea Alexandru Ralph van Roosmalen
Software Development Manager, Founder & Agile Consultant, Agile Strides
Mark Information
Ralph is devoted to helping teams create
Mircea is an experienced Software value while experiencing happiness at work.
Architect and Development Manager With more than 24 years of experience in
helping build top enterprise solutions using international management roles—such as
a variety of tools and technologies, lately scrum master, agile coach, VP software
focusing on modernization projects and development, and change manager—Ralph is
migration to cloud-first solutions. the founder and author of The Art of Teams
community, former CEO of Management 3.0,
and speaker. He is the author of many blog
posts and books, like Doing It—Management
3.0 Experiences and 40 Ideas to Spice Up
Your Retrospective.

Raluca Meyer
Founder &CEO, Viralink

Raluca is a seasoned entrepreneur with

extensive experience in coordinating
operations for product design, software
development, and integration in Vasi Axinte
Senior Software Developer, Wirtek
international markets. Skilled in Product
Management, Strategic Planning, Business Vasi is a full-stack developer experienced
Development, Entrepreneurship, and Agile in .NET technologies, architecture, code
Methodologies. Raluca is the founder design, DevOps and Azure. His domains
and CEO of Viralink, a disruptive and of interest include web development,
transparent advertising platform. Cloud and DevOps integration. For the
past year, Vasi has been working as a
full-stack developer on a system meant
to ensure the security of the electricity
supply in Denmark.

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CHAPTER 1

What are the ingredients of an

Agile way of working?

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The need for Agile
The Agile Manifesto emerged two decades ago and the short but revolutionary document went
on to change the way companies and individuals develop software products, and in recent years
run marketing campaigns or even discover new illness cures.

From startups to enterprises, many businesses take pride in being Agile and working in an Agile
way. With such a wide adoption, we couldn’t help but wonder if Agile is one-size-fits-all and if the
essence of the four values that make up the Manifesto hasn’t been diluted.

Terms such as “faux agile”, “Agile In Name Only (AINO) were coined to describe projects that lack
the core of the Agile principles and are only Waterfall or Spiral development in disguise.

Agile was born as an alternative to the process and document-heavy way of developing software
that relied on intense planning, such as Waterfall. The big problem was that planning and
documenting took away focus from what really matters - delivering quality to customers. There
was no outside feedback from end-users or customers until the very end of the development
process. It also involved a lot of decision-making in the early stages of a project, when teams had
the least amount of knowledge.

Agile is solving all these problems through continuously launching smaller pieces of working
software, getting feedback from users early on, and constantly improving the working process
along the way.

Instead of planning everything in detail, Agile teams have a common understanding of where they
want to get and ask themselves, “what can we build that delivers the most value today and brings
us closer to the vision?”.

They approach work step by step, maximizing learnings and adapting to newly found insights. As
soon as a feature is ready, they ask for feedback from customers or end-users. Before taking the
next steps, the team asks, “ are we building the right thing?” and “what can we improve?”. They
inspect and adapt along the way and then take another step.

Teams learn if they are building something that brings value to their clients or if they have
the right people with the right skills.

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Key ingredients of an Agile
way of developing software
#1 Motivation

Motivation is critical in adopting Agile because it gives teams and organizations the drive, the
“why are we doing this?”.

I believe the motivation to adopt Agile is one of the first ingredients - what benefits
are you hoping to achieve or what negative consequences are you trying to prevent?
I’ve seen a few “forced” Agile implementations where companies wanted to adopt
Agile because everyone is doing Agile. Still, they hadn’t identified a problem to solve,
so there was no real drive for change. When you have the motivation, you’ll know how
to make the transition to Agile.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

When you have a solid motivation to transition to Agile, your team buy-in comes as a byproduct.

I think it’s important to work with a team open to changes and have buy-in from
the entire team. Inside the project I work for, we eventually created a setup that
accommodates how people prefer to work and with our product needs, having both a
Scrum and a Kanban team.

Alexandra Filip, Scrum Master

#2 The right mindset: accountability & continuous improvement

Agile is more than a collection of practices and methodologies; it’s a mindset to begin with.

In the Agile mindset the entire team is well connected to the vision for the product and what
they want to achieve. The team members are collectively responsible for delivering what they

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committed to and for achieving the desired level of quality. This is a significant change of
mindset from traditional approaches where a project manager assigns tasks and holds people
accountable. In an Agile team, members hold each other accountable.

One of the most common challenges we face is the change of mindset - especially for
people with little or no prior experience of working in an Agile environment. Mindset is
hard to change - you can always adapt processes, but it’s not as easy to change your
mindset and get to a place where you commit to delivering a set of features by the end
of the sprint and hold to that commitment - as much as you can.

Mircea Alexandru, Software Development Manager

An Agile mindset also implies searching for better ways to work - looking to continuously learn
and improve the process.

The key is continuous learning and experimenting, inspect and adapt. Keep trying to
improve things, 1% improvement today. And to do that, you need to be as transparent
as possible, as legally and ethically is allowed.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

The continuous evaluation process that happens in retrospective meetings is critical

for me. It goes hand in hand with the kaizen concept - you never settle and think
everything is well, you know there is always something you can do better, and you
focus on improving one item at a time.

Mircea Alexandru, Software Development Manager

Being preoccupied with continuous improvement, reflecting at what you can do better
and changing what didn’t go well - I think that is the essence; whether it’s internal
processes, team interaction, interaction with users.

Adina Balea, Director of Software Engineering Services

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 Retrospective meetings are the starting point for improvement. Having healthy
retrospective meetings where all team members are encouraged to contribute and
speak about what they think worked well and didn’t help the process overall. When the
team doesn’t take the retrospectives seriously, there is no real progress, and you end
up demotivated.

Vasi Axinte, Senior Software Developer

#3 Collaboration

Intense collaboration inside the team and with end-users or customers is a prerequisite of an
Agile way of working. As one of the principles behind the Agile Manifesto states, “Business
people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”

The collaboration aspect has multiple implications. The development team collaborates with
business people to gather product requirements and with customers or end-users to gather
feedback early on. Inside the development team, members frequently communicate instead of
working separately and handing over the work to the next person.

I believe collaboration is a key ingredient for Agile software development, together with
a constant focus on business value and appropriate level of quality.

Raluca Meyer, Founder Viralink

In agile teams, the collaboration is intense, you work all the time with all the people in
the team. Regardless of whether you work in the same space or remote, you have in
place collaboration methods, such as a coding environment, code review environment.

Adina Balea, Director of Software Engineering Services

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#4 Transparency and visibility in the team

For an Agile team to be able to move fast and make decisions, the team needs transparency.

The entire team should understand the product’s vision and limitations, the user’s feedback and
have direct access to all the information to make decisions and deliver the best version of the
product at a given time.

When it’s a project manager or an architect that makes the decisions, you cannot be
agile - you can’t adapt easily and react fast, it takes time for a decision to be made,
and that makes the development process longer.

Adina Balea, Director of Software Engineering Services

Be transparent about everything you do, have a  learning mindset, and continuously
inspect and adapt. That to me, is the key to being Agile.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

#5 Self-sufficient, self-organizing team

An agile team collaborates intensively and communicates as often and as transparent as

possible. They make decisions on their own, intending to deliver the best possible product at a
given time.

For that to happen, the team needs to be self-organizing (they don’t need a project manager to
assign tasks and keep track of progress, the team members hold themselves accountable) and
self-sufficient (they need to have all the knowledge, both business and technical, and skills).

I believe it’s important to have the right people in the Agile team- people who have the
right skills, both technical and non-technical ones. Non-technical skills for me means
communication, cooperation, transparency, and integrity.

Ionuț Pop, Scrum Master

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 It’s essential to have the needed roles inside the Agile team. The Product Owner is
essential, as well as the Scrum Master. And ideally, you want to keep a stable structure
of the team.

Flaviu Zapca, Co-founder CoreBuild

Adina Balea supports this idea too, saying:

One of the most common challenges we faced was having a Product Owner in the
team who did not really have the vision of the product we were building. In those
situations, it took a lot of time for him to answer the team’s questions, why a certain
feature is needed or why it should work in a certain way. And that ultimately created
frustration and diminished motivation in the team.

Adina Balea, Director of Software Engineering Services

#6 Direct relationship with end-users or with client

To keep a short feedback loop, the Agile team needs to be in direct contact with the client
or end-users. It helps them understand why a specific feature should work a certain way, the
limitations in implementation, and what users are trying to achieve.

For us, working with the end-users directly makes a big difference. For example, one
of our clients developed a software application for children with Autism. Our team had
the chance to spend time with some end-users and observe their interactions, it was
an eye-opening experience. It’s the end-users who can tell you best what they need
from your product.

Adina Balea, Director of Software Engineering Services

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CHAPTER 2

Adopting Agile

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What is the proper context to
adopt Agile?
We can say the essence of the Agile philosophy is to enable teams to adapt fast in an
environment dictated by change. Is this still holding up, and is Agile fit for any context or type of
software product?

The consensus is that Agile works best when you operate in a market with many competitors, and
you need to embrace change.

If you are in an environment where you have a lot of competitors or when many
external or internal factors are influencing your business, you need to adapt - that is
when the Agile mindset can truly help.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

Agile philosophy is a good choice when your software product is very likely to modify as you don’t
have the exact requirements for the entire product.

If you have a product that is fully defined, there is no need to use Agile. However, if your
product is likely to change because you ask for feedback from stakeholders with every
release, then I think Agile is the right choice - that is the whole concept, adapting to a
changing context.

Flaviu Zapca, Co-founder CoreBuild

Two main questions you need to have in mind when considering Agile are: “Is the
product completely defined?”, “Does my product need adjustments along the way?” 

Raluca Meyer, Founder Viralink

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Gathering feedback is an essential aspect of Agile. Products and teams that require feedback
benefit the most from using Agile methodologies.

Agile works best for ongoing product development - such as modernization projects
where you start from scratch and require constant feedback. If you are building a
simple mobile app and know upfront what it should look like, then don’t do Agile as you
won’t reap the full benefits.

Mircea Alexandru, Software Development Manager

So is Agile fit for any type of context, product, and organization? The paradigm around Agile is
changing, from implementing Agile only in dynamic environments, with many changes, to using
Agile to induce change.

I believe Agile can work for any context and product. With this paradigm change, you
can use Agile even when you develop a well-defined product - as you can iteratively
improve the process. There is not one single definition of Agile and organizations
such as PMI don’t discuss in terms of Agile or Waterfall anymore, but about a way of
managing projects in which you can combine practices from both approaches: more
predictable or more adaptable ones.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

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How to win buy-in when
transitioning to Agile
Transitioning to a new mindset and way of doing things is no easy task, and winning buy-in,
especially from stakeholders, is a challenge. What are the most effective ways to make this
change?

#1 Communicate the why

For starters, it’s important to “sell” the benefits of Agile so that adopting it becomes a no-brainer.
People are more open to change when they understand why a change in mindset is beneficial.

One option to win buy-in is to explain what Agile entails, what are the benefits, making
sure to picture a real image, without the misconceptions.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

I don’t believe people are against change, but people are against being changed. So it’s
important to explain why you need to change your mindset.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

Delivering in milestones can be one of the most appealing benefits: shipping working
functionalities at specific times gives both the development team and the end client a sense of
progress.

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 Your goal working Agile is to build an iterative product, to release new working
functionalities at preset time intervals. So Agile gives you a process that “forces” you
to plan, prioritize and set goals for a shorter time frame. The development team stays
motivated as they move ahead, and clients get new features.

Flaviu Zapca, Co-founder CoreBuild

Experimenting and gathering feedback often enables the team to learn what works and adapt,
and this is another hard to ignore benefit.

Our goal with Agile is to gather constant feedback so that we can experiment and
adapt on the go. The sooner we learn something doesn’t work, the better - eg, it’s so
much easier to fix a bug before release rather than in production.

Mircea Alexandru, Software Development Manager

Adopting the Agile mindset can be the only viable option if you operate in a crowded space, where
your competitors build better products faster.

You can probably find similar products as your on the internet that are developed in
less time. If you want to compete with those products, you need to change. You cannot
do product development that takes years when your competitors just take months.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

#2 Treat it as an experiment

Instead of making significant changes and asking for approval, start with small ones that add up
in time until the change becomes visible. It matters that you set the right expectations from the
get-go: that this is an experiment, mistakes are expected, but the end goal is to learn fast and
improve.

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 Wording matters too: tell your team this is an experiment, we are going to try this new
way of working, we are going to make mistakes, but we are going to learn and improve
step by step. Another thing is to work with volunteers - you don’t want to force people.
Ask who wants to join a pilot and learn.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

The most successful Agile implementations I’ve seen are bottom-up. Start small
and have quick wins. It’s more important to do the work than just talking about
implementing Agile.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

#3 Create a safe space for your team

For people to experiment and feel comfortable failing, they first need to have the security of the
job and be reassured that mistakes are a normal part of the Agile process.

Create a safe environment where your team knows they will not be fired, because when
they are afraid to lose their job they will also be hesitative to change and take risks.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

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How do you know your Agile
implementation is a success?
Just as with any initiative, you want to try and measure whether transitioning to Agile helps your
company move in the right direction. But measuring is not that simple, as it’s not just one metric
you can look at and because, like many other companies, you might not have pre-Agile data to
compare with.

#1 Project metrics

For one, you can look at project KPIs and determine if your team delivered functionalities faster, if
the quality of the product improves and if the process itself improves over time.

You can ask yourself if you delivered faster and at better quality. These questions then
translate into pure Agile metrics: velocity, lead time, cycle time.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

Technical debt is another aspect you can assess. Ideally, your technical debt should be reduced
as you work with a constant loop of improvement.

We continuously look at technical debt in our project and ask ourselves if we are in a
good place. If otherwise, we plan improvements for the next sprint.

Vasi Axinte, Senior Software Developer

#2 Delivery predictability & speed

Having confidence in what the development team can deliver from sprint to sprint, in other words
being predictable, can be a good measure for success. Stakeholders and clients know what to
expect when the team delivers a constant volume of features/story points every sprint.

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 Promises made to clients are an accurate measure for us. If you manage to have
predictability and deliver what you intended to, then you can say the process you have
in place is an accurate one.

Flaviu Zapca, Co-founder CoreBuild

You can also look at the lead time of your product development- how long does it take
from idea to delivering value for the customer?

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

Agile is about frequent delivering of working pieces of software. I think that’s where
you can see best what is happening if you deliver successfully after each sprint, for
example.

Ionuț Pop, Scrum Master

#3 Team engagement and motivation

You can assess your company’s success with Agile by looking at how happy the team is with the
entire process, how the communication with business owners works, and how easy it is for the
team to adapt when something changes.

The success of your Agile implementation is related to a lot of things. It’s not just
revenue. For example: it’s also engagement, are people more engaged?

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

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 Agile gives the team a more strategic role. Employees can bring an added value to the
project rather than having a passive role. So this aspect of empowering people should
be enough to keep team members motivated.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

When the team shares the same product vision and mindset, the team runs less into
stressful situations, for example, changing the sprint scope mid-sprint. Eliminating
bureaucracy empowers teams to be autonomous, creating that feeling that you
actually made an impact on the product.

Mircea Alexandru, Software Development Manager

The common sense of responsibility felt by all the team members is also crucial for successfully
implementing the Agile methodology.

It’s important to know that I can count on a colleague to do his job properly and to have
initiative whenever unexpected things appear or when the situation requires this.

Vasi Axinte, Senior Software Developer

#4 Customer satisfaction

In a successful Agile implementation, each small shipment of working functionalities and quick
response to changes can increase client satisfaction considerably.

I believe the main indicator should be client satisfaction: with often validation and
frequent input, your clients should be happier.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

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 Your customer happiness can improve as you are able to respond faster.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

#5 Improved quality

The overall product quality and the overall development process can improve as the team meets
regularly to reflect on what they can do better.

When assessing our progress, we look at different things such as respected deadlines,
if the quality of the product and our process is improving.

Raluca Meyer, Founder Viralink

We look at the quality of our application to determine if we are moving in the good
direction, tracking KPIs such as overall performance.

Alexandra Filip, Scrum Master

With Agile, you should see improvement in the product quality: you have a short
feedback loop and can make adjustments if needed. If you can adjust fast enough,
that means you are in the right direction.

Vasi Axinte, Senior Software Developer

One final aspect to look into? If the Agile process you have in place works for the long run.

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 If your development process is stable long term, it means the team finds it valuable
and continues with it. But if you make changes all the time: you start with Scrum, then
change to scaled Agile and so on, that tells you something isn’t right.

Adina Balea, Director of Software Engineering Services

Regardless of what you track to measure the success of your Agile process, it matters that you
decide on the criteria upfront, define your goals and see if you are moving towards or away from
them.

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CHAPTER 3

Challenges with adopting

Agile

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Adopting an Agile mindset and way of working poses many challenges, as it’s more than just
a framework or a set of practices. This is quite a journey from changing people’s mindset and
aligning the entire organization to managing expectations and team motivation levels.

So what are the most challenging aspects when transitioning to Agile principles?

#1 Change of mindset

By far, the most crucial challenge has to do with changing an entire organization’s mindset.
Where most companies have difficulties is unrealistic expectations, thinking that just making the
decision to be Agile and investing in training is enough. In reality, that change will take months
if not years, especially if the rest of the organization (senior management, sales, marketing etc)
doesn’t align.

The change in mindset has to happen on various levels. For one, it’s about moving from a task
and process-driven organization to a value creation one, where people have the tools to decide
what they think it’s best.

Agile is a combination of structure, processes, methodology, but, especially mindset,

organizational culture and value systems. I see a lot of failed implementations caused
by the wrong mindset. It’s not enough to invest in education about Agile. Companies
need to create the right context so that people can take ownership. Agile is not a
destination, it’s work-in-progress.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

Transitioning to a mindset of creating value and making decisions involves risk, so companies
need to consider how they will handle it and encourage people to take ownership.

I see resistance to Agile because people still feel more comfortable in the old way of
working. In Agile, they need to make decisions on their own, and sometimes these
decisions will be bad ones, so they now need to adjust fast. Companies should pay
attention to how they manage this risk.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

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When adopting Agile, it’s essential to lead by example and adopt Agile throughout
the organization, instead of expecting the change to be embraced by your IT or software
department alone.

If the CEO decides to adopt Agile and expects people to change, but she continues to
work the same way she always has, people are going to notice and will question why
they need to change.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

Having patience in the process is also a decisive factor and poses problems.

When companies don’t have patience they won’t focus on the long term because they
expect results in a few months. If you hire an Agile coach, start doing Scrum and expect
to be Agile in six months, you are wrong - you just planted a seed if you are lucky.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

#2 A fine line between flexibility and structure

Agile is not just about flexibility, it’s a mix of flexibility and structure, and the lack of the latter
leads to chaos. That is why you need to have periods of uninterrupted work such as sprints. So
it’s essential to find your company’s balance between how much adaptability and predictability
you need.

Adaptability and predictability are the new terms we talk about, not Agile of Waterfall.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

And since we are always talking about flexibility, many times that gets translated into change
requests. A big challenge arises when change requests are based on opinions rather than facts.

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 In cases like this, it’s very hard to say ‘no’ especially if it’s coming from a leader in the
company with a lot of ‘political’ influence. So you are going to be thankful for feedback,
explain that it does not work and why, but you still get the same input. What then? In
cases like this what could work is creating a customer focus group to help steer the
direction of the product, driven by real-life needs and challenges.

Mircea Alexandru, Software Development Manager

#3 Keeping the team focused and motivated

Agile is about embracing change, but too much change can tire and demotivate people, so it’s
essential to take it step-by-step, introduce small changes, and communicate with your team openly.

Be careful with changing too much at the same time - give people time to adjust.
And keep in contact with them, care about people, listen to their complaints, worries
and ideas.

Ralph van Roosmalen, Agile Consultant, Agile Strides

#4 Stakeholder engagement

Keeping close communication with the business owners, the product owner, and the development
team makes the difference in delivering the right features or working in the wrong direction.

Engagement with the stakeholders, the Product Owner, in particular, helps a lot. I’ve
seen cases in which the Product Owner doesn’t have the time, enough knowledge or
simply wasn’t available to answer questions from the team in due time. And it created
tensions and confusion.

Vasi Axinte, Senior Software Developer

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 One of the challenges we saw was the lack of communication between the
decision-makers and the rest of the team involved, which can lead in treating
inefficiently the impediments that may occur during the processes.

Raluca Meyer, Founder Viralink

#5 Backlog management

One of the easiest traps to fall into is maintaining a large backlog, which works against agility.

It’s complicated to prioritize a backlog with 40-50 user stories. So it’s best to keep a
minimal backlog with what the team aims to deliver over the next 2-3 sprints. If you put
an item in the backlog to develop in the next six months, maybe it’s not that important.

Mircea Alexandru, Software Development Manager

Product Owner engagement is also critical, as well as the Product Owner communication with the
team.

Sometimes the team has a different priority than the Product Owner, and it’s important
that they talk openly about them and the risks and wins involved. The Product Owner
makes the final call, but the team’s role is to communicate openly what the risk is.

Flaviu Zapca, Co-founder CoreBuild

Our backlog has improved since having our Product Owner 100% focused on
managing the backlog.

Alexandra Filip, Scrum Master

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#6 Defining user stories

If you are to deliver the right product, it all starts with slicing your product into pieces. This
approach allows your customers to react, especially when long-term features are foggy (hence
the saying “I’ll know it when I see it”). The second thing is to identify how you want to use your
backlog: tasks or stories? There’s a reason why it’s called a story, it really needs to shortly tell
the story behind the feature request.

Implementing a user story with success starts with defining it with enough details so that the
development team can find the best technical solution. This process usually gets complimented
with a backlog strategy called story mapping. The final purpose is to create a user-centered
product, by visualizing the goals and steps needed for the feature to come to life.

When you define a user story from the user’s perspective, using the formula “as a user
I want to”...”so that” you are putting in just enough information so that the developers
know exactly what they need to build. I’ve seen cases in which the “so that” was not
defined at all, because they didn’t understand the value of it.

Adina Balea, Director of Software Engineering Services

Teams need to decide for themselves what they need to make sure they understand what they
should deliver.

In our team, we use a few guidelines we need to check for each user story: the user
story should be clear enough, and it has to have acceptance criteria, only then do we
move to estimations.

Vasi Axinte, Senior Software Developer

For more complex user stories, my team prefers to do a kick-off meeting with everyone
involved, architects, developers, QA. This way, we can all discuss, and everyone
understands what the story is about, without needing to document too much or create
detailed mockups.

Mircea Alexandru, Software Development Manager

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#7 Planning & Estimations

Planning becomes a challenge as stakeholders sometimes tend to change the sprint’s scope
right in the middle of it. Setting well-defined intervals for development will help in this sense.

Once you establish the scope of the sprint, you don’t change it. You need to have time
for uninterrupted work.

Flaviu Zapca, Co-founder CoreBuild

It’s appealing to make a change request during the sprint, but we learned not to affect
the sprint scope, except for “A errors” as we call them, critical issues we cannot
postpone.

Mircea Alexandru, Software Development Manager

Estimations can also be challenging when team members come up with very different time
estimates.

One challenge I’ve seen with estimations is that people will estimate differently
based on seniority level or just how they understand a story. When we see significant
differences in estimations, it’s a sign we might need additional clarifications.

Vasi Axinte, Senior Software Developer

One challenge I’ve seen is that people in the team, especially senior ones, will estimate
a story as if they developed it, and then at planning, that story is allocated to another
team member. In this case, we encourage everyone to speak out, ask for more time,
and re-estimate if they need to.

Mircea Alexandru, Software Development Manager

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But perhaps a more subtle challenge is moving from estimating work to estimating deliverables.

This is a difficult transition to make: from planning and estimating work to estimating
deliverables.

Agile Consultant, Rolf Consulting

In closing
Considering all the diverse and complex viewpoints we learned throughout this material,
can we draw a definite conclusion? Is Agile fit for any type of context and software product?
Is Agile a match made in heaven for teams and products operating in competitive markets
(that being virtually any market today)? Or can you successfully adopt Agile even in static
environments, when one wants to induce change?

While we feel it’s difficult to give an unbiased verdict, a few ideas surfaced over and over again.

Agile teams need to operate in transparent environments. They need to be able to collaborate
with business people and communicate with end-users to gather feedback fast.

They also need the right mindset, knowing they are responsible for their work and willing to
improve every day.And mostly, Agile teams need to operate in a safe space where people know
they can test, fail and learn.

Flexibility, predictability, and speed in delivery are nice “perks” that come with successful Agile
implementations. But adopting Agile for the wrong reasons or failing to adopt the mindset
throughout the entire organization makes the difference between failure and success.

Committed. Involved. Proficient. I 30

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